The Next Chapter of Luke

by Jenny O'Connell

  This time, I didn’t do a very good job of hiding how I felt about my new job.

  “There is an upside, though,” Nolan added. “The afternoons are pretty mellow. Are you here for the entire summer?”

  “Until mid-August, when I go home and get ready to leave for school.”

  “Freshman?”

  I nodded.

  “Me, too, at UMass.”

  I told him I’d be nearby, a twenty-minute bus ride away.

  “We just met and already we can’t get rid of each other,” he joked. “Follow me, I’ll show you where you’ll be working.”

  “I thought I’d be in there.” I pointed to the office.

  Nolan turned around and walked backward as he talked. “George didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “You’re not in the office. You’re out here.” He pointed toward the shortest dock—the one where I first spotted George yesterday. “Working the fuel pump.”

  The fuel pump? What did I know about fueling boats? What did I know about boats, period? I was about to correct Nolan when I realized he was joking with me again. “Funny.”

  “No. Seriously.” He wasn’t laughing this time. “George really didn’t tell you?”

  I couldn’t tell if Nolan was screwing with me, or if he was being serious. “The fuel pump? Are you sure?”

  “Don’t look so horrified. It’s not that bad, and it’s pretty easy. You’ll take the lines, tie the boats to the cleats, and then it’s really just like filling up a car. Sometimes people will ask for a bag of ice, some water, or something from the office, but other than that, you basically get to hang out on the dock.”

  The only cleats I knew of belonged on a soccer field, but he did make it sound relatively uncomplicated. “Okay, I think I can handle that. But first, you’ll have to show me what a cleat is.”

  Nolan shook his head. “You’ve never been around boats before, have you?”

  “Not until today,” I admitted. “You obviously have a little more experience.”

  “I’ve been helping out here since as long as I can remember.” Nolan started walking again. “The only reason George even wanted an extra set of hands is so he can spend more time on the water catching stripers.”

  “So you grew up here, on the Cape?”

  “All eighteen years. Can’t wait to leave.”

  I glanced around at the blue water, its color shifting depending on how the ripples reflected the sunlight, like a mood ring. The surface reflected wide beams of morning sun and the full, green trees bending their tired arms over the dirt parking lot. All around us, birds hopped between gnarly branches as if they couldn’t decide exactly where it was they wanted to sit as they sang their songs to one another. I would never consider myself a wannabe sailor, but I couldn’t imagine wanting to leave this place for a campus with thousands of strangers. “Really? UMass is going to be completely different.”

  “I sure hope so. The campus is practically as big as this entire town.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “That’s a great thing. Aren’t you looking forward to going away?”

  “Sure, but I’m still going to miss my friends and stuff.”

  “Well, if you play your cards right this summer, maybe you’ll have a friend at UMass who won’t mind hanging out with you.”

  It seemed like a nice offer from somebody who, twenty minutes ago, was a complete stranger describing the process of removing human waste with a hose.

  “Well, look at that.” Nolan pointed toward a motor boat making its way in our direction, the purring of its engine growing louder as it neared. “Your first customer.”

  “Really?”

  “Tell you what, I’ll do this one. You just watch me and ask if they need ice or drinks or anything. George calls it the upsell, very important.”

  We stood on the fuel dock and waited for the boat to make its approach. Finally, the motor slowly subsided and the hull tapped gently against the dock, pressing into the rubber fenders secured to the side by thick black nylon ropes. I watched as the boat’s owner handed Nolan another rope, and then as Nolan tied it in some sort of figure eight configuration around the low metal horns screwed into the dock every few feet. I assumed these were the cleats, and that whatever it was that Nolan had done to keep the ropes tight around the cleats would be something I’d execute perfectly by the end of the summer. Once the boat was secured, Nolan removed the nozzle from the fuel pump, and from that point on, it did look just like gassing up a car.

  “And we need a few mackerel,” the boater told Nolan.

  Nolan looked over at me. “Hey, come here. Just make sure the nozzle doesn’t move.” He pointed to the hose in his hand. “I’ll be right back.”

  Nolan disappeared down the dock and into the office, returning with a plastic bag filled with three stiff, frozen fish the size of my foot. He handed them to our customer and then took over the fueling again.

  When the pump clicked, I watched Nolan take the guy’s credit card and followed him into the office, where he walked me through the steps of ringing it through the register. Nolan carried back the bottled water and ice they ordered, then I helped him untie the ropes and the boat pushed off.

  “See? Just like a gas station,” Nolan commented once the whirring motor was far enough away that I could hear him. “Same principles apply—mainly, don’t get it all over yourself, and don’t light a match.”

  “How’d you make that knot?” I asked. “The one around the cleat?”

  “It’s called a cleat hitch,” he explained, and then pointed toward the water. “Actually, I can show you now. Here comes another one.”

  As Nolan and I waited for the boat to reach us, I turned to him. “One more thing. What’s with the fish in the bag?”

  “Yeah, meant to tell you about that. In addition to the ice and soda and snacks, there’s the bait. We have frozen mackerel, pogies, herring, squid, sea worms, eels, and chum.”

  “Chum?”

  “Think of chum as a bunch of fish parts. Sort of like the sausage of bait—lots of fish stuff mixed together. It’s all in the white cooler inside the freezer beside the refrigerator.”

  Josie and Lucy weren’t even out of bed yet. When they finally did drag their bodies downstairs in about two hours, Mrs. Holden would probably have Fourth of July pancakes waiting for them with blueberries, strawberries, and homemade whipped cream. Maybe they’d even enjoy some fresh squeezed orange juice. And I had fish parts.

  I didn’t really have any reason to believe Mrs. Holden would whip up a festive holiday breakfast. I didn’t know what anyone had for breakfast at the house, because my first two mornings there hadn’t been spent lounging in bed until the sun streaming into the room finally made it impossible to avoid opening my eyes. On my first morning, I was already out looking for a new job, and my second was spent here, in a shed that housed a stew of dead sea life in a freezer next to a dock where I was inhaling the fresh summer scent of marine fuel. While Josie and Lucy hung out by the pool all day, I’d be learning to tie cleat hitches like a seven-year-old Cub Scout.

  • • •

  Nolan had been right, and by twelve o’clock, the marina was practically empty. Most of the boats were gone, and there wasn’t much to do except listen to my stomach growl as it reminded me that I’d forgotten to bring a lunch.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go out and get something to eat?” Nolan asked, taking another bite of the sandwich he’d pulled out of a brown paper bag in the refrigerator.

  We were sitting in the canvas director’s chairs George had placed on either side of the shack’s back door so we could keep an eye on the docks and still help anyone who showed up at the marina’s office.

  “You get an hour break for lunch,” Nolan reminded me. “Take it.”

  “I’m fine,” I told him, even though the smell of his roast beef sandwich was making my mouth water. I wasn’t fine. I was famished. I was also hot and tired, and th
e last thing I wanted to do was get on my bike and ride into town with the sweltering sun beating down on me so I could buy an overpriced sandwich that would basically wipe out the money I made my first hour here. I’d made it through half the day. I could make it a little longer.

  “Okay, whatever you say.” Nolan took another bite of his sandwich, and my stomach betrayed me by practically begging for a bite. “Oh, for god’s sake.”

  A bag of potato chips flew through the air and landed in my lap.

  “You sure?” I asked him.

  “Eat.”

  “I won’t forget my lunch tomorrow.” I tore open the bag and savored the crunch of my first chip. “I swear.”

  I glanced down at my palms and noticed that the sore spots I’d been rubbing with my thumbs had erupted into full-on blisters, thanks to pulling and tying boat lines—Nolan taught me that they weren’t called ropes—all morning. I knew better than to pop them. My mom called blisters nature’s Band-Aids and had taught me at an early age that popping blisters only resulted in tender skin and possible infection (you can find all this in her book First Aid, Fast Aid: Keeping Cool, Calm, and Collected in Unexpected Situations).

  “They’ll get better once you get the hang of things,” Nolan pointed out, noticing the red swollen pockets of skin on my palms.

  I ate another chip and ignored the salt stinging my chapped hands. I was almost tempted to lick the salt from the potato chips off my fingers, but decided to wipe them on my shorts instead. What was a little salt when I’d already been splashed with fuel, dripped on by waterlogged lines, and even had the new experience of accidentally stepping in the remains of a gutted fish.

  In less than two months, it would all be over—my last summer with Josie, Lucy, and Luke before college, maybe even our last summer together—and what would I have to show for it? Callouses.

  “This isn’t exactly how I expected to spend my summer,” I told Nolan between chips.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “I guess I’d start with the fact that my hands smell like gasoline instead of waffle cones.”

  Nolan looked confused.

  “I was supposed to work at the Scoop Shack,” I explained. “My two best friends have jobs there.”

  “They’re lucky, that place always has a ton of job applications for the summer.”

  “Yeah, well, my friend Josie’s dad owns the place.”

  “And she couldn’t get you a job?” Nolan laughed. “That’s harsh.”

  “Long story.”

  “Well, it’s too bad it didn’t work out, but this can be way better than working at an ice cream window.”

  “How’s that?”

  “For starters, you get to be outside all day, which reminds me, you might want to wear a hat tomorrow. You’re looking kind of red.”

  “So skin cancer, callouses, and the scent of flammable liquids. That’s better?”

  “You forgot the chum,” Nolan added, dusting the crumbs from his lap as he took one last bite of his sandwich.

  “Ah, yes. The chum,” I repeated, before stuffing the last of my lunch into my mouth. “How lucky can a girl get?”

  • • •

  “Well, you survived.” Nolan pointed to the clock. It was 4:05, but now that I knew the clock in the office was five minutes fast, my brain automatically adjusted. The fuel dock closed for the day at four o’clock. “It’s quitting time.”

  I was sunburned, exhausted, and my deodorant had decided to call it quits about three hours ago.

  “So are you coming back?” Nolan asked as I slid my bike helmet out from under the cash register counter.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Three summers ago, George hired a girl and she lasted two days. Barely. She’d hang out on the fuel dock in a bikini top and complain anytime a boat pulled up for service, like they were interrupting her tanning schedule. Not that I have anything against bikini tops, but she was a pain. George swore he’d never hire another girl.”

  “Maybe he decided to forego gender stereotypes when he met me,” I reasoned, sounding a little too much like my mother.

  “Yeah, I’m sure that was it, and it had nothing to do with the fact that it’s July and he’s desperate to get more time out on his boat.”

  Desperation. Like George, I knew how that could drive you to do things you once never imagined.

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at seven,” I told Nolan.

  “I don’t come in until nine.”

  “Was that an option?” I asked. “Because had I known…”

  Nolan smiled and tossed me a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “You’re seven to four, I’m nine to six.”

  I held the cool, sweating bottle to my chest before securing the buckle of my helmet under my chin.

  “That’s a good look for you,” Nolan added.

  Even though I probably should have cared that the scent of fish, fuel, and nine hours’ worth of July humidity clung to my skin in an invisible cloud of stench, and that I probably looked worse than I smelled, all I wanted to do was go home and collapse. And shower. If my mom saw me right now, she’d probably recommend donning a pair of rubber gloves from now on, which wasn’t a bad idea. Only I wasn’t sure which I hated more, the smell of fuel embedded under my fingernails or looking like a housewife in a dish detergent commercial.

  “Well, then, see you at nine,” I muttered, using all my strength to push open the screen door to the parking lot. I could barely muster up the energy to walk to my bike, let alone pedal all the way back to Josie’s house.

  “Don’t forget to pack a lunch,” Nolan called after me. “I’m not sharing my chips tomorrow!”

  I raised my hand into the air without even looking back, resisting the temptation to hold up my middle finger as I departed. Instead, I waved and started my two-mile ride home.

  • • •

  By the time I pulled into Josie’s driveway, I was ready to fall into a lounge chair by the pool, if I even managed to make it that far before my legs buckled beneath me right there in front of the garage.

  Fortunately, I managed to put one foot in front of the other long enough to make it inside to the kitchen, where I spotted Lucy and Josie out on the back patio. They didn’t see me standing in the shadow behind the sliding screen door, but I could see them perfectly. Lucy was braiding her hair, which I’d learned was something she did every day before leaving for work because Mr. Holden made all the girls wear their hair tied up under their Scoop Shack baseball caps. I guess long strands of hair dotting banana splits were bad for business. Josie sat beside Lucy, her legs crossed like a pretzel as she fiddled with the buttons on the camera her parents gave her for graduation. They had to be at the Shack in half an hour, and then I’d be alone again while Mr. and Mrs. Holden went to a July Fourth barbeque.

  “So how was it?” Lucy asked when she heard me slide the door open. “Did you ride through a sprinkler on the way home?”

  “It’s almost ninety degrees and I just rode a bike two miles.” I held my arms out to the side as I walked toward them, a meager attempt to air out my stinking pits. “It’s sweat.”

  Josie wiggled her nose. I watched as a familiar crease formed between her eyebrows, which meant she was trying to figure something out.

  “I wouldn’t go near an open flame,” Josie finally told me. “You smell like gas and a can of tuna fish.”

  Lucy leaned toward me and sniffed. “She’s right. I thought you were working at the snack bar at some yacht club.”

  “It’s not a yacht club, it’s a marina. And it turns out the snack bar is the fuel pump, and we sell bait.”

  “You’re all red.” Lucy pointed to my cheeks.

  “Sunburn,” I told her. “I was outside pumping gas and helping boats tie up to the dock.”

  “That sounds nice.” Lucy looked to Josie. “Doesn’t it?”

  “Sure, it must be pretty by the water all day,” she chimed in. “How’s your boss?”

  “George? H
e wasn’t there. I worked with his nephew.”

  Josie perked up. “A nephew? Does he have a name? And an age?”

  “Nolan. And he’s starting UMass in the fall.”

  “I think we’ve met him, isn’t he a friend of Alyssa’s?” Josie asked Lucy, and then turned to me. “He’s cute.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?” Josie repeated. “Come on, Emily, you have a boyfriend, you’re not dead.”

  I tried to picture Nolan away from the dock—what I’d think of him if I ran into him in the halls at school. The only word I could think of when it came to Nolan was unkempt. It was a word my mom used to describe people whose hair needed a cut, whose clothes needed a good ironing, and who didn’t seem to care much about what she termed personal appearances.

  Even so, I had to say, the look fit Nolan—the dirty blond hair that seemed to land wherever the breeze pushed it, the wrinkled khaki shorts and thin, faded T-shirt my mom would have removed from his clothing rotation and put into use as a dust rag. I got the feeling Nolan just didn’t care about whether his hair was falling into his eyes or his shorts were hanging so low they could have used a belt (my mom believed belt loops existed for a reason). He may be counting the days until he left the Cape for college, but Nolan was exactly what you pictured when you thought of a guy spending his summer by the ocean.

  “Sure. I’d say he’d be considered cute,” I conceded.

  “See, I knew you could do it!” Josie snapped a long lens onto the front of the camera and then smiled at Lucy. “She’s not dead after all.”

  “As long as you have to pump gas, at least you get to look at Nolan while you’re doing it,” Lucy offered up as a consolation prize before twisting an elastic around the tail of her braid.

  “Now it’s our turn to work for the man. Off to do the ice cream thing.” Josie carefully placed the camera and lens into the padded camera bag on the table and zipped it closed. “You want to come with us? Hang out while we decipher the orders of little kids who can’t decide between chocolate dip and chocolate fudge?”